Many artists, when faced with the task of doing a Christmas album, merely knock out a selection of familiar pop tunes and perhaps a hymn or two and call it at that. Mary-Chapin Carpenter's COME DARKNESS, COME LIGHT: TWELVE SONGS OF CHRISTMAS is something entirely different: a largely self-written song cycle capturing several different aspects of the holiday season with grace, wit, and feeling. Carpenter, always a songwriter of emotional complexity and novelistic detail, invests these 12 songs with both delicacy and strength.